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tv   The Daily Rundown  MSNBC  October 25, 2012 6:00am-7:00am PDT

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i'm there. >> shut it down. >> e-mail bankruptcy. >> willie, let my inbox go bankrupt. >> just be quiet. >> okay. >> chuck, i tried to get it to you on time. i really did. heilemann kept talking which reminds me there is this moment in congress -- >> i love this story. >> '96, '97 in the cloak room. come on. >> it's "morning joe." here's chuck. see you. six of one, half dozen of the other, 12 days separate president obama and governor romney from the next four years. polls tight in seven tossup states, they're racing across the country to pave that way to 270 electoral votes. ohio is one of those crucial states and we're here on the ground in cincinnati with a deep dive into the key counties to
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watch on election night to know which way the buckeye state will break. new developments in the aftermath of the attack that killed the u.s. ambassador in libya. secretary of state hillary clinton comments on the latest revelations. good morning from cincinnati. it's thursday, october 25th, 2012. this is "the daily rundown." i'm chuck todd. i think we're now under three hours until the first poll closed. developing now, live pictures of an obama campaign rally in tampa, florida. the president in the middle of a 48-hour nonstop campaign swing after an overnight flight from nevada. he's hitting the trifecta today. he'll be in virginia and ohio later and then a stop in chicago to vote early before heading back to the white house for a little bit of sleep late tonight. the president is expected to speak any minute now. of course brian williams has been traveling with the president. he joins me now from that tampa rally. brian, i'm in hamilton county perhaps the most important
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county. you're in the most important county in florida. >> reporter: this county has 10% of the vote in. the last couple rallies since we've been on the trail, it's all about early vote. early vote. last night katy perry event in nevada was all about early vote. president is coming on the stage now. i'm about ten feet away from the senior strategist in the chicago engine room who is on this trip and like all of the guys on this trip, needs a shave and a cup of coffee. the president did decide to in effect pull an all-nighter. a few hours sleep in the front cabin of the plane. i asked the campaign spokeswoman here do you worry on a day like today that nothing big happens in the world because the leader of the free world is working on three hours of sleep. this trip, chuck, as you well know, look at where they're going. eight stops. 24 hours. about 6,000 miles. two trips to illinois and
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exactly 24 hours we landed yesterday and will become the first president to vote early today. this is all where they need it. they're really just getting started. they're going to crisscross with the romney campaign just under 12 days. >> you know, everybody wants to know crowd size. what was it like? what kind of crowd did they get last night? what have you been seeing? do you feel like there is enthusiasm on the trail from what you watched? >> reporter: what we're doing out here is basically devoting half of our "rock center" broadcast to the campaign. we asked the romney to do the same thing. one of the points i'm going to make, probably obvious to you, this is not '08. an incumbent looking for re-election. the country has been through a financial shock. and we're in an outdoor cou
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courtyard. hard to say but last time this could have been 50,000 people and today i think we're pushing five. it's just a different time. a different campaign. they are slugging it out. it will be hand to hand combat in the battleground. >> all right, brian williams. i know you'll have more time with the president today. more on "nightly news." thank you. appreciate it. we'll dip in to hear the president's rally right now. >> you notice my voice is getting a little hoarse. i'm just going to keep on. just going to keep on keeping on until every single person out there who needs to vote is going to go vote. because the stakes are just so
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high, florida. you have heard now three debates. you have seen months of campaigning. way too many tv ads. i know you are sick of the tv ads. except the ones that i make. maybe even those too. you also had a chance to see the two candidates and the two perspectives. you have heard governor romney's sale pitch. don't boo. vote. he's been running around saying he's got a five-point plan for the economy. except it turns out that it's just a one-point plan. a sketchy deal that says folks at the very top get to play by a different set of rules than you do. they get to pay a lower tax rate. they outsource jobs.
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they want to rollback wall street reform. that was his philosophy in the boardroom. that was his philosophy as a governor. if it sounds familiar, it's because that's the philosophy that created a great recession. we tried that in the last decade. it didn't work. it led to falling incomes and the slowest job growth in half a century. and the worst economic crisis since the great depression. we've been working hard for four years to clean it up. to clean up the mess that got left behind. and governor romney i think knows this. he knows his plan isn't any different than the policies that got us into the mess. in the final weeks of this election, he's counting on you forgetting that his policies aren't going to work. he's hoping that you won't remember and you'll come down with a case of what we call
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romnesia. he's hoping you don't remember that his economic plan is likely to create jobs in china and not america because of companies that ship jobs overseas. he hopes you won't remember he wants to give millionaires a $250,000 tax cut because the only way he can pay for it is by either blowing up the deficit or making middle class families may more in taxes. he's hoping you're going to come down with a severe case of romnesia just before you cast your ballot. tampa, i want you to know this. if you are starting to get a temperature, your ears are ringing, your eyes are blurry, you're showing symptoms, you can't remember what you just said last week, if you start thinking that maybe governor romney wanted to save the auto industry -- >> you've been hearing the president at his rally in tampa.
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very similar remarks he's been giving throughout this 24, now 48-hour campaign swing coast to coast if you will. we'll dip in throughout the day as he makes his stops. mitt romney with his stops all day in ohio. paul ryan, joe biden, et cetera. so with that said, let's get back to and right to my first read of the morning. the president is now in an eight-state battleground blitz. davenport, iowa, denver, colorado, los angeles and las vegas. now you have tampa, hard charging final push to net early votes as you heard brian williams report and try to break the dead heat in this campaign. here's a little taste of the president on the trail yesterday. >> this is the first stop on our 48-hour fly around campaign marathon extravaganza. this is where it all began four years ago. i have come back to colorado and this may not be the last time
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you'll see me. >> we're pulling an all-nighter. no sleep. and if you're not going to sleep, you might as well be in vegas. >> this is all about turning out his supporters of course and last night pop star katy perry and 13,000 nevadans urged the crowd to vote early. the president made a surprise visit to a hotel greeting hundreds of hotel and casino workers. it was spontaneous of course. one of these spontaneous events that just happened to have a lot of people there for the president to handshake with. >> one of my favorite organizations in the country are culinary workers, hotel workers -- >> along for the ride, of course, on the president's 48-hour whirlwind tour has been
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brian williams. a special package of coverage on tonight's broadcast of "rock center." brian asked him if he thought this race would be as close as it is. >> how is it that with 13 days to go you're fighting for your life in a 47-47 race? >> actually, i think that, you know, we always knew this was going to be a close race from the start. what we have right now is a lead that we maintained throughout this campaign. >> brian also asked the president about our polling which shows when it comes to the president's second term if he gets one, voters want change. a lot of it. major change. here's the president's response. >> recent poll 4% of voters said they would like a first term like the second. 62% of voters said they would expect major changes in a second obama term. would you be prepared to enact
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truly major changes? >> brian, you know, if you think about that question, i would like to meet the 4%. we went through the worst crisis in our lifetimes. we had the stock market freeze up. tank. financial market freeze up. small businesses couldn't get financing. we lost 800,000 jobs the month that i took office. so of course people want to make sure that we continue with the progress that we've started to see. >> nbc of course has extended the same offer to the romney campaign to join the governor on the trail. we're hoping to get that done next week. by the way, one of the president's 2008 supporters seems satisfied enough to back him again. former secretary of state colin powell endorsed the president this morning and explained on cbs why he did it and why he didn't go with romney. >> not only am i comfortable
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with what governor romney is proposing for his economic plan, i have concerns about his views on foreign policy. the governor who was speaking on monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different than what he said earlier. i'm not quite sure which governor romney we would get with respect to foreign policy. >> voters in ohio picked the winner in every presidential election since 1960. no republican has won the white house without it. so the last stop on the president's whirlwind tour will be cleveland and mitt romney kicks off barnstorming in ohio that will take him to nearly every part of the state. a new poll shows the race is tightening slightly. romney is down 49-44 and more importantly so far the romney campaign is not asserting they are ahead here yet. they really believe it's not a five-point race. they think it's closer. romney was greeted by enthusiastic crowds in nevada and iowa yesterday and he's aiming to convince voters his campaign has the momentum and that he's winning.
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>> if i'm elected -- when i'm elected, we're going to -- i am optimistic not just about winning. we are going to win by the way. i'm not just optimistic about winning. i'm more optimistic about the future for america. >> on wednesday night mitt romney continued to lay out his campaign's closing argument with a more personal pitch. >> this is a defining election. defining for the nation but also defining for your family. it matters to those seniors that want good health care. it matters to those in their 40s and 50s and 60s that are earning money for their retirement and for their families. it matters for kids coming out of school looking for a job. >> romney's tone is all about the soft sell to suburban women. yesterday romney made the case that under a second obama term, children would attend failing schools courtesy he said of obama's union allies.
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>> you see, the teachers union is there but the pta doesn't have a union and parents don't have unions and kids don't have unions. when i'm elected president, we'll make sure we have a voice for the kids of america and their parents and the teachers. >> paul ryan made an economic speech in enemy territory, if you will. cleveland. the president won his largest margin of any ohio county in 2008. >> in this war on poverty, poverty is winning. we deserve better. to hear some tell it, we think everybody should just fend for themselves. that's just a false argument. it's a strong man set up to avoid a genuine debate. the truth is mitt romney and i believe in true compassion and upward mobility. >> ryan will campaign in ohio this weekend and tomorrow romney will make his closing arguments on the economy. he's giving a big policy speech in ames, iowa. why do presidential
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candidates do late-night television? as we saw with the president last night who waded into the richard mourdock rape controversy, it allows them to be sure a message breaks through. the president notably did not tie romney to mourdock, the campaign is doing their best to make that connection in an online video. obama aides needled romney for refusing to ask the mourdock campaign to pull down an ad that features romney saying and said in their quote it's perplexing he wouldn't demand to have that ad taken down. in a news conference yesterday, mourdock tried to fix his problems saying his comments are peeing taken out of context. >> i absolutely abhor violence. i abhor any kind of sexual violence. i abhor rape. for those that want to twist comments and use them for partisan political gain, i think
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that's what's wrong with washington these days. >> meanwhile, the romney campaign said wednesday he's sticking by him saying we disagree on policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him. unsurprisingly, candidates in close races have disavowed mourdock's comments. a surrogate canceled a campaign trip planned with mourdock. senator john mccain responded this way when asked if he still supports him. >> i think it depends on what he does. if he apologizes and says he misspoke and he was wrong and he asks the people to forgive him, then obviously i would be the first. it's when you don't own up to it that people will not believe in you. >> the swing vote in indiana is made up of moderate republicans who are big fans of people like ousted senator dig luger were
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mccain fans when he ran against bush. something like that could make the difference between the win of the race. we have more coverage of our special edition in cincinnati, in ohio. we're in the most important county of the state. hamilton county. we'll be right back. ty one perc. home values... rising. our auto industry... back. and our heroes are coming home. we're not there yet, but we've made real progress and the... last thing we should do is turn back now. here's my plan for the next four years: making education and training a national priority; building on our manufacturing boom; boosting american-made energy; reducing the deficits responsibly by cutting where... we can, and asking the wealthy to pay a little more. and ending the war in afghanistan, so we can... do some nation-building here at home. that's the right path. so read my plan, compare it to governor romney's...
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and decide which is better for you. it's an honor to be your president... and i'm asking for your vote... so together, we can keep moving america forward. i'm barack obama and i approve this message.
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candidates are crisscrossing the buckeye state today. tonight the president heads to friendlier territory in cleveland two days after visiting dayton with the vice president. by the end of today, the four candidates will have made ten stops in nine ohio cities since monday. i guess it means it's about ohio. with me now, on behalf of the obama campaign, ohio's former democratic governor, ted strickland.
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governor strickland, you were in a very tight race in 2010. give me the sense -- share with me how things felt to you this point in time, 12 days before the election compared to how you feel right now, the president's chances in ohio. >> day and night. we are in good shape here in ohio in terms of the president's re-election. it's going to be tight. all of the polls have shown that it's about a five-point race. i think ohio is going to stay with the president. the president has been good for ohio. our unemployment rate is 7%. in large part because of the stimulus. the recovery act and the saving of the auto industry. ohioans understand that. it's going to be close, ohio is going to be in the obama column and i think that's going to make it very, very difficult for
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governor romney to win this election. >> where are you most concerned about the president underperforming? >> well, of course, you know, the area that's heavily democratic but we have to get the vote out there akron and canton area is another area where if we get our vote out will be helpful to the president. i think where you are there in hamilton county, you know, hamilton county is an area that's been trending democratic as some of the wealthier republicans move out to the suburbs. i think the president is going to do well in hamilton county. and certainly in the columbus area, toledo, youngstown, the president has been to dayton. i think he's going to do well throughout ohio. we really need to get the vote
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out certainly in the northeast eastern ohio area. >> i want to ask you about a story on the front page of "cincinnati inquirer" here. it is a rule here in ohio that has to do with absentee ballot. if you request it and vote on election day, you'll be told to cast a provisional ballot and those provisional ballots then are not counted until november 17th. understandable why they have this in the law. but the law of unintended consequences on this. how concerned are you that you guys have a big push to get people to vote early in absentee and your vote will be provisional if you're down by a point or two in the raw vote on election night. >> one thing that's happening in
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ohio that's encouraging is we are following these requests for absentee ballots. they will be contacted multiple times until they send in their ballot. we've anticipated this ground operation on the obama side which is unprecedented. i think it will perhaps make the difference. i don't know how many absentee votes have been cast but we're approaching a million. 800,000 and a million. and the fact is that we do know who have sent in absentee ballots and those who haven't will be contacted. we think that will minimize that problem. >> all right. former democratic governor here in ohio. a pleasure to have you on. thanks for coming on this morning. >> thank you, chuck. welcome to ohio. >> thank you, sir. i always enjoy being here. you saw that story right, folks.
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november 17th those provisional ballots don't even start getting counted. just think about that if we haven't called ohio. the feds file a billion dollar suit against a big-time bank and new jobless numbers are out. we'll have that straight ahead. new voter fraud in florida. we'll tell you about that. who is trying to convince swing state residents they're not eligible to vote. did a congressman's son vote support for voter fraud. today's trivia question, in the last 100 years, how many times has ohio not voted for the winner in the presidential election? tweet the answer @chucktodd. answer and more coming up on "the daily rundown." man these guys are slow.
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reminds me of our network before cdw virtualized it. how? cdw and hp networking implemented a virtual application network that reduces the time to deploy cloud applications from months to minutes. with fewer bottlenecks like this. finally. charles! client golf. aim for the lake. really?
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on the radar this morning, wikileaks is releasing more classified documents. florida gets hit with a storm of voter intimidation and jim moran's son puts himself in a campaign time-out. > new e-mails obtained by nbc may shed more light on the benghazi attacks showing that officials at the white house and state department were advised two hours after the attack that a militant group had taken credit for them on facebook. secretary of state hillary clinton cautioned against jumping to conclusions when asked about this yesterday. >> you know, posting something on facebook is not in and of itself evidence and i think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be.
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>> wikileaks announced it will release more than 100 classified files from the department of defense today. in a press release on their website, the whistle blowing group says they'll release restricted policies outlining rules for handling detainees in the u.s. military custody. the fbi is investigating at least 50 cases in which florida voters received intimidating letters telling them they hmay not be eligible to vote and will face criminal charges if they cast a ballot in the upcoming election. the son of virginia democratic congressman jim moran, patrick moran is the son, resigned from his father's campaign after a conservative group released a video of him talking about casting fraudulent ballots. he said he never endorsed unethical behavior but is stepping down so he's not a
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distraction to his father's campaign. jobless claims are down and business spending appears to be picking up. becky quick joins me now. weekly jobless claims. how is that in the stew of what you do today? >> it's shaking out to a more normalized level. we talked about the jobless claims for a few weeks in a row. it's been a volatile number. two weeks ago the number dropped way below what people were expecting. last week it jumped above what people were expecting. this week it shook out down 23,000 to 369,000. that's closer to the trend line. this is probably a number you can bank on more closely. a lot of figures are volatile. the same thing happened with durable goods. spending was up especially because of transportation orders. it was up about 9.9%. again, this has been a very volatile number. the last number we got on this one was down by better than 12%. again, there have been some really weird kind of things that moved through some of these numbers. it looks like we'll get back to a trend line we've been seeing
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for months. we feel like we're getting through the seasonal factors that maybe are falling on a different time frame than the street had been expecting. good numbers from proctor and gamble and earnings is moving wall street. we're just opening and it looks like the dow will be up by 80 points. at least good news after a few rough trading days, chuck, i'll send it back to you. >> look at you. a p&g shout-out while i'm in cincinnati. hurricane sandy takes aim at the east coast. we're taking a deep dive into the battle for the buckeye state. counties to watch and how to watch those counties. "the daily rundown." we'll be back in 30 seconds.
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okay. scaring the living daylights out of the east coast time. hurricane sandy just off the florida coast this morning has potential to steal headlines from politicians next week as it heads for an historic late season landfall in the northeast. bill karins joins me now. explain it all to me but i was a weather geek yesterday. weather underground had this crazy thing that could happen. the cold front, jet stream goes one way. this hurricane comes another. they described it as almost a weather bomb could go off. explain. >> yes. we're looking at something potentially that could happen that we never had in the record books. you can go back to hazel in 1954 that did something similar to this but never had a hurricane come off cuba this late in the season and then go up into the
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northeast. extremely rare. if it does happen, it would be the first time in history books. the storm is just off cuba going through bahamas today. still doing destruction down there. florida and the entire southeast you kind of get spared the worst of this storm. it parallels the coastline. you'll have rough seas. high tide cycles. lose pieces of beach. we won't see a lot of damage. at the end of this forecast as it looks like it is harmlessly going out to sea getting capture and sent back toward new england. it's rare to see this many going back toward washington, d.c., philadelphia, baltimore, possibly new york city or maybe even further to the north. one of our computers is potentially hinting at just this huge storm with wind and rain problems and many issues through the new england area and the storm could end up back in ohio by the time we get to tuesday. i guess the bottom line with this storm is it looks like we'll get hit and nailed. this could possibly be a billion dollar weather disaster. monday, tuesday, next week.
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a week before the election. as far as swing states go, new hampshire and virginia the two most likely to be impacted with new hampshire being the favorite for people without power maybe all of the way to election day. that's the story. updates tomorrow of course. >> all right, bill. i know you're tracking it. a crazy time for this big of a weather issue. all right. thank you, sir. well, it's high in the middle and round on the ends and part of every -- i forgot my fun little animation. been part of every winning presidential campaign of the last 50 years. i know you love the water. today we take a deep dive into the battlegrounds of ohio inside the state. a state that has a history of voting democrat around the cities of course and republican pretty much everywhere else. if you look at the county breakdown for 2004 in that presidential race, john kerry dominated the northeast around cleveland as well as around columbus and toledo. he didn't win those areas by enough to beat president bush and overcome president bush's
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advantages in the rest of the state. in 2008, president obama managed to hold onto kerry's territory but he expanded the map slightly pushing into counties around toledo and along the eastern border and made one historic gain where i'm at flipping hamilton county, home of cincinnati. hamilton backed president bush by more than 20,000 votes but it swung to president obama and he won by 29,000 votes. the county has been trending democrat for some years but it actually hadn't tipped over until 2008. a look at the candidates' schedule shows you how tight the race is. mitt romney will be in cincinnati later today and worthington. a suburb of columbus. the suburb is important to romney in the state of ohio. paul ryan's speech on poverty was in cleveland. it was an attempt to trim some of the president's margins in the largest county in the state. then you had the president and vice president making their
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pitch to ohioans on wednesday in a couple of different states. wait until you hear biden. >> where are you coming from? i said dayton? he said where are you going? i read in the paper you love ohio. you went from dayton, ohio, to marion, ohio. >> if anyone comes to the white house from ohio, they'll get a hershey bar this big. >> pandering to ohio. the race for ohio is going to come down to the margins. mitt romney doesn't have to win these big democratic counties. he just has to hold down the president's score. george w. bush won the race in 2004 by limiting kerry's gain. something he couldn't do to barack obama in 2008. look at three of the largest counties in the state. kerry won by 227,000 votes. in 2008, fewer people voted but
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president obama added to his margin. he won by 30,000 more votes. in lucas county, in 2008 obama won the county by nearly 70,000 votes. and then of course there's franklin county which includes the capital of columbus. one of the faster growing parts of the state. in 2004, john kerry won it by just 48,000 votes. four years later, president obama more than doubled that total. he won by 116,000 votes. that's one way to watch this is on the margins. the test. does he maintain those margins? add to them? the challenge for mitt romney, can he do with a bush did and keep margins if check and run up the score in the rest of the state and maybe even flip hamilton. he doesn't have to flip hamilton. he has to keep the margins tighter. you're going to see romney doing a lot of suburb work. all right.
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we've got a supersize panel joining us next. with the president away, here's what they're serving up at the white house. soup of the day today chicken tortilla. maybe that will be a late-night snack for the president when he finally touches down later. we'll be right back. first, i want to give you what may have been the best moment from the president's interview with jay leno. >> what's this thing with trump and you? it's like me and letterman. what does he have against you here? i don't get it. >> this all dates back to when we were growing up together in kenya. [ female announcer ] caroline penry began using olay total effects in 2001.
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and you never need referrals. so call now to request a free decision guide and learn more. after all, when you're going the distance, it's nice to have the experience and commitment to go along with you. keep dreaming. keep doing. go long. >> do you, ambassador, deny the ussr has placed and is places medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in cuba? yes or no? don't wait for the translation. yes or no? >> daily flashback to this day
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50 years ago when the u.s. ambassador to the united nations confronted the soviet ambassador at the security council meeting then. stevenson said he would wait "until hell freezes over for an answer on whether there were soviet missiles in cuba." when he refused to answer, stevenson presented photographic evidence of the missile buildup. candidates are sprinting to the finish line with 12 days to go before the election. they are both out with a couple new ads. here's a taste of both of them. >> the stuff some folks are saying about president obama sounds kind of familiar. the same people said my ideas would destroy jobs and they called me every name in the book. >> every democrats say obama's policy is wrong costing american jobs. the more obama borrows from china, the more we will have to bow to china. >> let's bring in our panel.
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well, steve, since i started with one of your ads, i want to ask you about the targeting of china here. is china sort of the best message that republicans and mitt romney have in terms of trying to win over this potential swing voter in ohio who may be pro-auto bailout but upset with china. is that your mission? >> it's mapart of a matrix of arguments. this ad makes the argument there's a further consequence of it that because we've been weakened financially, we also become weakened in our ability to deal with trade threats from china and we found that it's a very, very compelling message particularly in union high density areas. >> steve , china bashing is something that both democrats
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and republicans use when they feel it necessary. you're a union member in toledo and akron. you hear bailout arguments. everything on television here feels on the democratic side it's about the auto bailout. >> the most effective hit is jobs in ohio. the china argument is a great argument and test it in a poll and it works well. sometimes it's not very credible when you turn it into an ad and especially when you turn it into an ad using it against the person who saved jobs in ohio to argue that's the person who might threaten jobs in ohio with some argument. it's an argument i think that republicans find more appealing than middle class voters, democrat or independent. >> i want to turn to the bill clinton ad. we see a ramp up of clinton not just on television. here's the schedule that the obama campaign announced of bill clinton and barack obama
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campaigning together on monday and the places they're going. youngstown, ohio, working class white voters. prince william county. one of the ultimate -- one of two ultimate swing counties in the state of virginia. loudoun is the other one. outer suburbs of washington, d.c. and orlando just a mega i-4 corridor. they fell like bill clinton is the best verifier they have with the white suburban vote? >> it tells me those are the states they want to cut into to stop movement by romney and tells me that bill clinton is a closer. that's what they want. they want the closer to come in in the final days and rev up the crowds and right now, you know, as we all know, there's only a few percentage of people that are undecided so what's really important is getting these people out to vote and that's something that bill clinton can do. >> michelle, i've been surprised, frankly, that the schedule seems to be a mix of both campaigns.
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on one hand the president's schedule looked to me it was all about base turnout and all about trying to get -- that's what the swing feels about. that's the early vote push. you look at monday schedule and looks like they are worried. mitt romney the same way. his florida schedule on saturday all about the base. he's only hitting base areas. but today he's hitting a lot of swing areas. >> and what this tells us is that good old saying has not gone away. every single vote counts. both campaigns have to be worried about two things. getting out new voters, getting out persuadables but making sure that the enthusiasm that barack obama had in 2008, that there is no enthusiasm gap and that his base and everyone who voted for him in 2008 comes out and shows up this november. same thing for mitt romney. he's got to find a way to galvanize the far right of the party who quite frankly may be upset that he's taken an abrupt
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swing to the center two weeks before the election. he has to do the same thing. bet his base out but get independents and undecides to pull the trigger on november 6th. >> all right. a question for the group. i want you to comment on this. i know it's hard when i'm remote. it has to do with the question of the media narrative on whether this race. is romney winning? is obama winning? you have president insisting he's ahead in electoral college. national polls are close. he's ahead. romney campaign insisting no. we have momentum. maybe we're not ahead yet but we're going to be. but do you buy this idea that you need this sort of perception that you can win in order to turn out last-minute voters? is this what this is about is trying to look like a winner because if you do that might mean extra votes? >> you just need to win. what we're encouraged by is that you're seeing romney rise significantly in a cross section
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of states that could add up to a substantial win in just a couple of weeks. i don't think it's a perception game. it's got to be a reality game because we're still far enough out that what's really going to come down is what you really got. we're seeing a lot of forward movement in places like iowa, in ohio, in nevada. even in wisconsin and i think all of that changes the electoral map and gives us an opportunity to pull it off. >> steve, we saw the fear factor ad coming from the obama campaign today. talking about that number of votes that swung florida in 2005. you have a positive narrative coming from romney. we're winning. get on board. look at us. and almost fear factor in the obama campaign. >> yeah. i think what the obama campaign is trying to do is they're trying to motivate the voters who think as of three weeks ago the president looked like he was in good shape and now he's in a close race.
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we need to get them out to vote. interesting for the past several years i would look at the reports and wonder how the obama campaign could spend $200 to $300 million and not see evidence of it they were registering voters registering places like ohio, florida and virginia and the places that will make a difference in their campaign and now they're trying to get those voters out. >> lois, is it the responsibility of the media to sort of decide to litigate this idea of who really is ahead and who is right on this to say we're winning? >> i think it's the responsibility of the media to give a good picture of where the electoral college is and to that extent we've done a pretty good job of saying okay, romney is doing well. his confidence is up and he's leading in the national polls and let's just pause for a second and let's look at these numbers down in the weeds and these are the numbers that really matter in the battleground states.
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also, it's very important for these guys to have a balance when they're out there to be enthusiastic and positive, but not complacent because they need to get people revved up and not revved up to think that as steve said that they've already won and they want people to say my vote's going count on this one. >> i get the sense that people are revved up in nine states. >> why? could it be because of all of the ads that we're seeing are just focused on nine states? yea, the battleground states, i don't know how people will stand it over the next couple of weeks, watching the ads over and over and over again. the danger here is you don't want people living in quote, unquote, nine battleground states to think their vote doesn't matter because it does. every single citizen has a moral obligation to go out and cast their vote for who believe will do the best for the future of the country. >> and it's not just for the presidency. go vote in your local elections, votes. that's what hits home even more.
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it drives me nuts when people say why should i bother? it matters who your state rep or who the school person is or the ballot initiative. anyway, stick around, guys i want to talk more mourdock. and how many times has ohio not vetted for the winner in the presidential election? the answer is two. in 1944 ohio went for dewey over fdr and in 1960. by the way, that '44 race, a historical connection in this campaign. 1960 ohio picked nixon, the last person to win the white house without winning ohio. the website just got a makeover, msn msnbc.com. check out the blog. we add stuff to it all of the time. you're watching msnbc. we'll be right back. ill have a . [ male announcer ] dayquil doesn't treat that. huh? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus rushes relief to all your worst cold symptoms,
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and a little breaking news. the romney campaign raised over $110 million in the first 15 days of october, anyway. michelle bernard, stephen law, this campaign will not be decided by money. i want to talk about richard mourdock, any consideration of you guys pulling your ads on mourdock. this is what haley barbour who is part of what you guys do, what mourdock said was kind of crazy and any thought of mourdock and the support of crossroads. >> another group is taking over next week and in our view it's not helpful, but not fatal and with respect to -- with respect to romney, i think no impact at all. focus on the economy. >> okay. quickly around the horn, quickly. worse for romney or the senate chance at steve mcmahon? >> both. >> michelle bernard? >> i'm with steve. both. >> lois ramano?
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>> both. plays into obama's narrative about republicans being bad for women. >> well, i think it's worse on the senate front, less of an impact on romney. i'm sorry about shameless plug, guys. i'm running late. the shameless plug is for this state, the state of ohio. it's unbelievably important. that's it for this edition of "the daily rundown." we're going for a full five days on the road and we'll see you right back here in cincinnati tomorrow. so long, and may the good news be yours. coming up next, chris jansing. bye-bye.
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